The Gambian village of Sareh Pateh, pop. 4,000, turned on solar street lights for the first time this week. Senegalese-American rapper Akon is investing in solar power projects across Africa. He hopes to launch a mini-grid solar project and has added The Gambia and Cape Verde to his Akon Lighting Africa initiative, a fund that already helps off-grid communities in 25 African countries.

Europe’s electricity trade association just published a guidance report for islands as test-beds for pioneering installations of energy storage systems. It includes examples like Project STORE on Spain’s Canary Islands, where the technical and economic feasibility of three different technologies are being demonstrated in real world settings. Electrochemical storage, an installation of 1 MW/3 MWh Li-ion batteries on Gran Canaria, and two lesser-developed storage technologies – flywheels and ultra-capacitors are being tested on the islands of La Gomera and La Palma.

Researchers at the Centre for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technologies (CREST), National Institute of Engineering (NIE) have designed an integrated and decentralized microgrid that can provide any household with continuous energy. The project is funded by an MoU between the University of Wisconsin-Madison and NIE college and involves the development of a microgrid prototype utility-in-a-box to be deployed in a pilot location, followed by the deployment of a microgrid in a tribal village community near Hunsur (Mysuru district.)